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President Obama welcomes a Russian proposal for Syria to place its chemical weapons under international control. Speaking on US television he said his preference is to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis and he has instructed secretary of state John Kerry to talk directly to the Russians. The Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov raised the prospect of international observers supervising such a handover

Summary

Here's a summary of where things stand:

• It was a second day of accelerated diplomatic activity. However a proposed new UN resolution ran into immediate complications. The resolution would require Syrian president Bashar Assad to turn his chemical weapons arsenal over to international control. An impromptu security council meeting called by Russia to discuss it was abruptly canceled.

•At the heart of the disagreement over the resolution is the question of whether it would be binding, authorizing the use of force in case of noncompliance. US secretary of state John Kerry insisted that it must be. Russian president Vladimir Putin insisted the opposite.

• US officials credited the plausible threat of US force with creating new diplomatic breathing room. President Obama was expected to keep up an urgent call for an authorization to use force in Syria. Administration critics said the policy has run willy-nilly.

• Syria continued to eagerly demonstrate a willingness to negotiate. Foreign minister Walid al-Moallem said Damascus would declare its chemical weapons assets, agree to their destruction, sign the international chemical weapons convention and promise not to produce more weapons.

•US officials warned against "stalling tactics" to divert US strikes on Syria. US secretary of state John Kerry said the president would decide how long to allow negotiations at the UN to play out.

• The Senate has postponed a vote on an authorization to use force. The House has not scheduled a vote. A bipartisan group of senators set to work on a revised authorization to suit the changing diplomatic picture. Obama had lunch with members of the group and others today on Capitol Hill.

• Kerry called on the Assad regime to seek a broader peace deal. "I would hope that he and Bashar al-Assad would take this opportunity and try to reach peace... to go further," Kerry said.

Syrian warplanes were back in the sky over the Damascus suburbs today after three weeks of relative calm, Reuters reports:

Not seen in action around the capital since before Aug. 21, when hundreds of people were killed in a poison gas attack that Western powers blame on Assad, government jets mounted attacks on three areas, some in support of assaults on the ground.

As world leaders discussed a Russian proposal to confiscate Syria's chemical weapons and avert U.S. and French action, some of the heaviest fighting was in Barzeh, just north of central Damascus, where residents and opposition activists said air strikes and tank fire supported thrusts by pro-Assad militia.

The Syrian state news agency said troops "inflicted casualties on terrorists" in Barzeh and neighbouring Qaboun.

"Even if the Russian initiative fails, the regime has at least bought itself time," opposition activist Salah Mohammad said. "It seems to be calculating that no strike is coming soon."

Read the full report here. Separately, Arabic-language al-Aan correspondent Jenan Moussa passes on a report of opposition infighting in the town of Deir ez-Zour.

Russian president Vladimir Putin confirmed that he spoke with US president Barack Obama on the sidelines of the G20 summit about a possible plan for Syria to give up its chemical weapons. Reuters has text of the Russian president's remarks:

"Russia's position ... is well known - we are against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction of any kind - chemical and nuclear weapons," Putin said.

"In the current circumstances in Syria this is really taking on special importance, and the U.S. president and I really did discuss it on the sidelines of the G20 summit."

"By the way, this issue has repeatedly been discussed by both experts and politicians - the question of placing Syria's chemical weapons under international control. I repeat, the U.S. president and I discussed this theme on the sidelines of the G20."

"We agreed that we would step up this work, intensify it and instruct the (U.S) secretary of state and the Russian foreign minister to ... enter into contact and together try to advance a solution to this question," he said.

“We are not simply getting the permission the way we want it from the authorities to go in,” said Magne Barth, head of the ICRC’s delegation in Syria. “We are unfortunately not able to do as much as we should.”

On Monday Syria Deeply ran an Alison Tahmizian Meuse story on displaced Syrians in Lebanon, where one in every four residents is now a refugee:

On the side of the highway in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley, Mohammed, a 14-year-old Syrian boy, sells baby chickens. Dyed neon, they wait in a cage for new owners. They are only 500 Lebanese Lira ($0.33), commonly purchased as gifts for young children. If Mohammed is lucky, they will sell out of chicks by dusk and he will take home half the earnings, roughly $20, to feed his family.

A Syrian refugee child who arrived with his family from Damascus, plays at the Majdal Anjar refugee camp in Bekaa Valley near the Syrian border in eastern Lebanon, September 9, 2013. Photograph: JAMAL SAIDI/REUTERS

“People yell at me from their cars. They curse and make fun of me,” he says. Back in Aleppo he was in school, but now he and his brothers must try and make a living since his father has not been able to find work.

Every fourth person in Lebanon is now a Syrian refugee. But its government, fearing a demographic shift, has not allowed for the establishment of designated refugee areas. Instead, Syrians are hidden in crowded apartments in urban centers, scattered along highways and living in sprawling unofficial “camps.”

Diplomatic sources say it's unlikely there will be any late-night action at the UN security council tonight after Russia's surprise cancellation of the consultations Moscow had itself called, the Guardian's Ed Pilkington (@EdPilkington) reports from UN headquarters in New York City. "Nor is there any sign so far of an attempt to reconvene tomorrow," Ed writes:

The draft resolution put forward by the US, UK and France is now in the hands of experts from the three countries who are putting the finishing touches to it before it is more widely circulated.

The Guardian's Martin Chulov reports from the Aleppo area in northern Syria, where jihadist opposition fighters foresee a US attack – on them:

While Syria's mainstream rebels are enthusiastically welcoming talk of an American attack as a chance to break the stalemate, the jihadist groups among them see things through a very different prism, in which my enemy's enemy is not necessarily my friend.

All across the north, al-Qaida and its affiliates are on a war footing; a rank and file convinced that an old foe is coming their way and that if and when the US air force does attack, they will have little trouble staying out of its way.

"There are many among us [who] fought in Iraq and Afghanistan," said a second jihadist, a 26-year-old softly spoken Saudi, who called himself Abu Abid. "Our emir knows how to deal with them. And all know that while the Americans say they want to attack the regime, we are their real enemy."

Abu Abid was speaking inside a roadhouse east of Aleppo, where he and other jihadists whom he says "come from every country you could imagine" gather to eat, and drink tea or coffee.

There's just one problem with the international plan to secure and dispose of Assad's chemical weapons, military affairs correspondent Yochi Dreazon writes in Foreign Policy: "the plan would be nearly impossible to actually carry out":

Experts in chemical weapons disposal point to a host of challenges. Taking control of Assad's enormous stores of the munitions would be difficult to do in the midst of a brutal civil war. Dozens of new facilities for destroying the weapons would have to be built from scratch, and completing the job would potentially take a decade or more. The work itself would need to be done by specially-trained military personnel. Guess which country has most of those troops? If you said the U.S., you'd be right.

Text of Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Moallem's remarks on joining the international chemical weapons convention. "We are ready to declare the location," he says.

"We want to join the convention on the prohibition of chemical weapons. We are ready to observe our obligations in accordance with that convention, including providing all information about these weapons," Moualem said in a statement shown on Russian state television.

"We are ready to declare the location of the chemical weapons, stop production of the chemical weapons, and show these (production) facilities to representatives of Russia and other United Nations member states," said Moualem.

Syrian prime minister Wael al-Halki said that Damascus had accepted the Russian proposal to turn over its chemical weapons "to spare Syrian blood," state television reported. (Reuters)

US secretary of state John Kerry said the United States is waiting to hear suggestions from Russia on how the arsenal turnover would work:

"He is sending those to us. They'll be coming informally in the course of the day. We'll have an opportunity to review them," Kerry said in a Google+ hangout interview. Kerry had spoken to Lavrov earlier on Tuesday. (Reuters)

In the Google hangout, Kerry staked out a position on a UN resolution directly opposed to the Russian position as laid out by president Putin, calling for a binding resolution backed up by force. AP's Matt Lee reports:

Kerry said Tuesday that Russian suggestions that the U.N. endorsement come in the form of a non-binding statement from the rotating president of the Security Council would be unacceptable to the Obama administration.

Kerry said the U.S. has to have "a full resolution from the Security Council in order to have confidence that this has the force that it has to have."

He added that the resolution must have "consequences if games are played and somebody tries to undermine this."

In addition to promising that Syria would declare its chemical weapons and sign the international convention on them, foreign minister Walid Moallem said Syria would stop making chemical weapons, the AP reports.

The extent to which Moallem speaks for Assad is unclear. AP:

Walid al-Moallem also says Syria is ready to cooperate fully to implement a Russian proposal to put its chemical weapons arsenal under international control and it will stop producing chemical weapons.

He adds that Syria will also place chemical weapons locations in the hands of representatives of Russia, "other countries" and the United Nations.

The Senate suspended plans to vote on military authorisation after meeting with President Obama over lunch on Tuesday to discuss the proposed Russian deal, Guardian Washington bureau chief Dan Roberts reports:

Majority leader Harry Reid said: “it's important we do this well, not quickly,” but called on the Syrian government to show that its offer to hand over chemical weapons to international observers was “not a ploy”.

Fellow Democrat Joe Manchin, who has opposed military action, said he was heartened by the meeting with the president and said he would pursue a separate resolution giving the Syrians time to comply.

Setrakian asks Kerry about the breaking news of Syria's avowed willingness to declare its chemical weapons arsenal and sign the international chemical weapons convention.

Kerry calls on Assad to use this moment to enter full peace talks:

I know Walid Moallem," Kerry says. "He hosted me... I would hope that he and Bashar al-Assad would take this opportunity and try to reach peace... to go further. To help us in the next days" to figure out how to export and destroy the weapons and to determine how they can make this process work.

Kerry concludes: "I hope that perhaps in the next few days they'd be willing to help us try to make those concrete."

Kerry is asked what the UN can do to build humanitarian aid efforts in Syria:

"The UN is absent on this issue regrettably because the Russians and the Chinese have blocked us I think now 11 or 12 times" from establishing access routes to aid civilians in Syria.

"We've been blocked by particularly the Russians... and I think every listener, as you think about why this is important, you've really got to ask yourselves, what does it mean that the principle supporters of Assad" are Hezbollah and Iran.

Good conversation in the Google+ hangout (see previous post). Lara Setrakian asks Kerry how long the US is willing to wait for new action on Assad's weapons.

"It's up to the president as to how long we wait. The president makes that decision," Kerry says. "We are exchanging some ideas... the president will decide what time frame he can live with."

Setrakian asks how this new direction in Syria policy came about. Kerry:

We've had conversations about chemical weapons for some period of time... more specifically, we discussed this last week, Sergey Lavrov and I discussed it, President Putin discussed it with President Obama in St. Petersburg, and President Obama instructed him that" he would take it up on the foreign minister level.

Kerry concludes: "I obviously mentioned it in public in London on Monday and we are where we are today."

Senate majority leader Harry Reid has just spoken following the lunch with Obama, Dan reports. Reid said the Senate still wants to vote on military authorisation but timing will depend on diplomatic developments. Dan writes:

Reid says Assad has to show that his openness to turning over chemical weapons is not a ploy. He adds that the US knows exactly where the chemical weapons are. The senator concludes by saying, "it's important we do this well rather than quickly".

Summary

Here's a summary of where things stand:

•Russian president Vladimir Putin called for a UN resolution to remove chemical weapons from Syria but said one condition would have to be the US rejecting a use of force – a condition the US seemed unlikely to accept. The UN security council announced a meeting Tuesday afternoon to discuss a potential new resolution.

•Before Putin's stipulation, US leaders had greeted the Russian overture with enthusiasm. US secretary of state Kerry said removing Assad's chemical weapons presented an "ideal" path forward. The president called the Russian proposal "potentially positive."

•The need for the credible threat of military force remains, Kerry said. He credited military pressure by the US with having created a new diplomatic possibility. He said he had not misspoken when he said Monday that Assad could avoid strikes by turning over his weapons, although the state department at the time treated the offer as a misstatement, explaining that Kerry was making a "rhetorical argument."

•President Obama was to make a prime-time televised address Tuesday night on Syria. He is expected to argue that military strikes – or the threat of military strikes – still are needed. One question: Does Obama continue to see the Russian proposal as "potentially positive"? Or has Putin already scuttled it?

• Obama continued his full-court press to win approval to use force in Syria, inviting congressional leaders to lunch at the White House. But Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell announced his opposition to using force in Syria.

•Syria said it has accepted Russia's proposal. Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said that his government "agreed to the Russian initiative" as a way of "uprooting US aggression."

•A bipartisan group of senators was working on a new authorization to use force, one day after majority leader Harry Reid announced that a preliminary vote on the original authorization had been postponed.

• President Obama spoke Tuesday with prime minister Cameron and president Hollande, and the three countries presented a united front to procure a UN resolution on Syria.

• US secretary of defense Chuck Hagel and General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said strikes on Syria would be an "act of war," notwithstanding Kerry's repeated assurances that the Obama administration is "not asking to go to war."

Russia's opposition to an American use of force blankly contradicts a revised Senate resolution being drawn up by a bipartisan group including Democrats Robert Menendez, Carl Levin, Charles Schumer, Chris Coons and Robert Casey, as well as Republicans John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Kelly Ayotte and Saxby Chambliss.

The draft legislation proposes that the United Nations pass a resolution saying chemical weapons were used, then the United Nations would remove the weapons from Syria by a set date, Reuters reports:

If that did not happen, the use of force would be authorized, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.

John McCain: supports the use of force. In Phoenix, 5 September. Photograph: Jerry Burch/Demotix/Corbis

The Russian objection to a new UN resolution is cued to any potential use of force, ambassador Alexandre Orlov told French radio TRL, Reuters reports. It appears that Moscow is asking for a nonbinding – and relatively flimsy - resolution.

Orlov did say there "needs to be a resolution":

"There first needs to be a resolution that puts Syria's chemical weapons under international control, which Syria has already accepted, and if there is something lacking we can come back to the U.N. Security council to negotiate a new resolution," Alexandre Orlov told French radio RTL.

Orlov said he had doubts over France's intentions by calling for a Chapter VII resolution of the U.N. charter which could enable the use of force.

Following on Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov's expression earlier of a lack of enthusiasm for the new US-UK-France initiative at the United Nations, the Russian ambassador to France says France cannot impose anything on other UN security council members, Reuters reports.

The ambassador also said the world needs to make use of a window of opportunity on Syria. So there's that.

Proposed U.S. strikes on Syria over its alleged use of chemical weapons should not increase refugee flows to neighboring Jordan, which is already under tremendous strain, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Tuesday (via Reuters):

"I think it's very unlikely that you would see any increase in refugees because of the nature of the kinds of very precise strikes that we're talking about," Hagel said at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee

Secretary of State JOHN KERRY looks on as Secretary of Defense CHUCK HAGEL testifies before the House Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill on the situation in Syria. Photograph: Pete Marovich/ZUMA Press/Corbis

President Obama is due to meet for lunchtime talks with Democrat and Republican senators on Capitol Hill after an earlier motion to authorise military force was put on hold by majority leader Harry Reid late on Monday, Guardian Washington bureau chief Dan Roberts (@RoberstDan) reports:

Congressional attention is now focused on an alternative idea originally floated by Democrat senators Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp that would give Syria 45 days to comply with the UN chemical weapons convention and then leave the White House to decide whether military action was required if Bashar al-Assad is deemed to have failed to taken sufficient steps.

The Manchin/Heitkamp motion is likely to be substantially revised by Senate leadership to take into account the proposed Russian deal, but may provide a template for how Congress can keep the pressure up on Assad without forcing a vote on authorising military action that Obama risked losing.

More on Russia's thinking, as characterized by the French foreign minister (via Reuters):

"As I understood, the Russians at this stage were not necessarily enthusiastic, and I'm using euphemism, to put all that into the framework of a U.N. binding resolution," Laurent Fabius told French lawmakers after a telephone conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

There's some debate over whether this Russian lack of enthusiasm constitutes obstructionism:

British prime minister David Cameron has announced that the UK, France and US "will be tabling a UN security council resolution today." Cameron calls the Russian proposal "serious" but says "a proper timetable" is needed.

The Guardian's Andrew Sparrow has Cameron's comments:

What's important is to make sure this is not some delaying tactic, that this isn't some ruse. If this is a serious proposal, then we should act accordingly. And a UN security council resolution is a good idea.

In that resolution it is quite important that we have some clarity about thresholds. We need to know that there's a proper timetable for doing this. We need to know that there would be a proper process for doing it. And, crucially, there would have to be consequences if it wasn't done.

This is a serious proposal. We should treat it accordingly. Of course we should be sceptical. Of course we should not forget a war crime has been committed. But this could be a major step forward. But we need to test it out properly.

I think we should also be clear that none of would be happening if there wasn't serious international pressure, led by the United States, on Syria over the issue of chemical weapons ...

This is not about someone monitoring chemical weapons in Syria. This has got to be about handing them over to international control and their destruction ...

If we can achieve the removal and the destruction of the biggest chemical weapons arsenal in the world, that would be a significant step forward. So it is definitely worth exploring. But we must be sceptical, we must be careful, we must enter this with a very hard head and some pretty cool calculations, because we do not want this to be some delaying tactic, some ruse to just buy time for a regime that must act on chemical weapons.

"They have 1,000 metric tons of chemical agents. ... most of that is in the form of unmixed binary components probably stored in tanks," he says. "They also possess sarin munitions and other things that cannot be accounted for here."

He says the weapons have been moved to keep them away from opposition forces:

The one benefit of the fact that the regime controls most of these weapons: As the war has progressed... we know they have moved these munitions into a more safely controlled area. This is all regime territory.... The majority if not all of it is in an area controlled by Assad forces.

Kerry says president Obama has spoken with the French and English leaders and the three agreed to explore an international disarmament proposal.

I've been informed that the president of the United States... has completed a conversation with president Hollande and prime minister Cameron... and they agreed to work closely together in consultation with Russia and China aot explore the viability of the Russian proposal and to put all the Syrian CW" under international control.

Kerry says he also spoke with French foreign minister Laurent Fabius this morning.

I believe as firmly as I am sitting here this morning... that if there is no response ... [Assad] will do it again. We will be back here revisiting these issues... and the next time... it may will be about direct American casualties.

And yet there is no safety in action: "There is no operation perfect, I cannot guarantee anything," Hagel says.

President Obama's effort to win congressional support for strikes on Syria suffered a blow Tuesday when Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, said he would not support the military authorization. From AP and Reuters:

McConnell says the proposal is, quote, "utterly detached from a wider strategy to end the civil war" in Syria.

"A vital national security risk is clearly not at play," in Syria, McConnell said in a statement that made him the only one of the top four U.S. congressional leaders to oppose the resolution.

He said there were "too many unanswered questions" about U.S. strategy in Syria, and the proposed strike may be a "mere demonstration," while a Russian proposal to secure the weapons was worth exploring.

Senate leader Harry Reid announced yesterday that a planned vote on the resolution for Wednesday had been postponed. Critics thought it was because he didn't have enough votes to pass it. Kerry has just told the House armed services committee that the Senate chose to hold off "to see whether there are any legs to this Russian proposal."

US secretary of state John Kerry delivered a strong endorsement Tuesday of a Russian proposal for Assad to turn his chemical weapons over to international hands, calling the plan "the ultimate way to degrade and deter" the Syrian president's capacity to use the weapons.

Kerry told a House committee he had held "several conversations" with the Russian foreign minister about the proposal, which he called "the ideal way to take this weapon away from them."

Kerry warned that the United States would not allow debate over the proposal to run long.

"[This] cannot be a process of delay," Kerry said:

[This] cannot be a process of avoidance. It is exceedingly difficult... to fulfill these obligations. We're waiting for that proposal. But we're not waiting for long.

We are not going to fall for stalling tactics.

US secretary of defense Chuck Hagel echoed Kerry's skepticism:

"All of us are hopeful that this option might present a solution to this crisis," Hagel testified. "Yet we must be clear-eyed and ensure it's not a stalling tactic.

Hagel credited a plausible threat of US force with opening a diplomatic opportunity:

"The threat of US action must continue. ... The fact that [President Obama] put military action on the table enabled this new diplomatic option to maybe gain credibility."

Kerry said the credible threat of US force had already born fruit:

"Make no mistake why this idea has any potential legs at all...: a lot of people say that nothing focuses a mind like the prospect of a hanging. Well it's the credible threat of force... that has brought the regime for the first time to even acknowledge they have a chemical arsenal... and to talk about a real ... diplomatic option.

US Secretary of State John Kerry is still banging the drum for support for military intervention against the Assad regime in Congress. Appearing before the the Senate's armed services committee Kerry said "What Assad has done directly affects American security."

Not acting against Syria would signal US "ambivalence" to Iran, he said.

Kerry also insists that diplomacy has been the "first resort" of the Obama administration towards Syria, but diplomatic initiatives have been repeatedly blocked by the Russians.

Kerry claims 31 countries have signed up to a "strong response" to Syria's chemical attack. He said diplomatic efforts would be bolstered if the American spoke with "one voice" on Syria.

McCain seeks amendments

Leading Senate hawk John McCain said is working to amend a congressional resolution authorising military force in Syria to include a "strict" timeline for Syria to turn over chemical weapons.

Speaking on CBS' "This Morning" , McCain said he was "extremely sceptical" about the idea that Syria could hand over its weapons, but said "to not pursue this option would be a mistake."

Reuters quoted him saying:

"Some of us are already working on a modification to a Congressional resolution that would require strict timelines and strict guidelines that would have to be met as part of the authoridation for the president [to use military force]."

It added that Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Heidi Heitkamp are pushing an alternative that gives the Assad government 45 days to sign an international chemical weapons ban and begin the process of turning over its weapons.

A crowd member holds up signs against military action in Syria as US Senator John McCain speaks with constituents during a town hall meeting in Phoenix last week. Photograph: Ralph Freso/AP

President Obama's approval rating on foreign affairs has continued its steady decline - from 54% in January to 49% in April, 44% in June, and just 40% now. This may be a troubling sign for a president who in past polls had always scored his highest ratings for his handling of foreign affairs.

Splits in the Arab League

The Russian proposal on Syria's chemical weapons appears to have opened up divisions in the Arab League.

The league general secreatry Nabil Elaraby said he backed the plan and claimed the league has always favoured a "political solution".

But the six Gulf states continue to call for action against the Assad regime. Speaking on behalf of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Bahrain's Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, said: "The GCC condemns the ugly crime committed by the Syrian regime by using internationally banned chemical weapons, which resulted in the killing of hundreds of civilians. "This requires the United Nations and the international community, represented by the security council, to shoulder its responsibility."

Reuters also quoted Khalifa calling for "appropriate deterrent measures against those who committed this crime".

Obama still seeks backing for strikes

Obama is still going to press ahead with plans to try to convince Congress of the need for strikes against Syria, despite the potential diplomatic breakthrough over chemical weapons.

Speaking to MSNBC White House spokesman Jay Carney said: "What the President said last night reflects where we are this morning: we see this as potentially a positive development and we see this as a clear result of the pressure that has been put on Syria."

Carney said Obama will ask a reluctant Congress to authorize limited strikes on Syria as a way of testing whether Syria is seriously committed to putting its chemical weapons beyond use. Obama will address the nation later today, Carney said.

Syria 'agrees' to Russian plan

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said after meeting with the speaker of Russia's parliament that his government quickly "agreed to the Russian initiative."

Moallem added that Syria did so to "uproot US aggression."

His statement sounded more definitive than his remarks on Monday, when he said that Damascus welcomed Russia's initiative.

Meanwhile Britain has demanded evidence to show that the proposal is not a delaying tactic.

Reuters quoted Defence Secretary Philip Hammond as saying:

We are in favour of anything that resolves for the longer term the problem of this massive stockpile of chemical weapons the Syrians have got ...

History teaches us to be wary of anything which might simply be a delaying tactic.

We will need very rapid, very clear evidence that this is a genuine, good-faith proposal and that it can go somewhere, not an alternative to addressing an international community response to the actions which took place on August 21.

But in TV interviews Obama insisted that he had first raised the idea at the G20 summit as his administration scrambled to claim credit for the Russian deal and insisted Syria was responding to US pressure. "It is unlikely that we would have arrived at that point without a credible military threat," Obama told CNN.

Now Obama's version of events has been backed by Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov. "The issue was discussed," Peskov told Reuters. He would not say who raised the issue or give other details.

Russia's president Vladimir Putin welcomes US President Barack Obama at the start of the G20 summit in Saint Petersburg.

Syrian opposition dismisses Russian plan

Syria's main opposition group has dismissed Russia's offer as a delaying tactic.

In a statement the Syrian National Coalition said the proposals does not address "issue[s] of accountability for crimes against innocents". It added:

The proposal is a political strategy that aims to stall for more time, which will allow the regime to cause more death and destruction in Syria, and pose a threat to the countries and peoples of the region.

The Syrian Coalition emphasises that the violation of international law necessitates a serious and proportionate response. It is not possible under any circumstances to allow war crimes go unpunished. Crimes against humanity cannot be absolved through political concessions, or surrendering the weapons used to commit them.

The only guarantee of serious negotiations is establishing the right conditions. This is best achieved by stopping the Assad regime's killing machine and bringing to justice perpetrators of war crimes against the Syrian people.

It is vital to remember that the Assad regime, notwithstanding its use of chemical weapons, continues to use all kinds of conventional weapons against innocent women and children. The Assad regime, which has butchered people with knives and burnt them alive, has exhausted all time limits over the past two-and-a-half years.

Fabius said the proposed resolution would be under Chapter 7 of the UN charter covering the possible use of military action to restore peace and would require Damascus to reveal "without delay" the extent of its chemical programme and place it under international control for dismantlement.

Reuters quotes the French foreign minister as saying

The Russian foreign minister made an offer ... This cannot be used as a manoeuvre to divert us. That is why we have decided to take this initiative. France will put forward a resolution at the UN Security Council in this sense and the procedure starts today. All options remain on the table.

Reuters adds:

The draft resolution would include an explicit condemnation of 21 August chemical weapons attack on the outskirts of Damascus which the United States says came from Assad's forces and killed more than 1,400 people.

It would also contain a call for those behind the attack to be punished at the International Criminal Court.

Fabius said he was looking to schedule visits to China later this week and Russia early next week for talks with the two veto-wielding members of the UN Security Council.

Lavrov said that after Russia and Syria work out the details of their chemical weapons offer they will then be ready to finalize the plan together with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

Syria is believed to have production facilities near Damascus, Aleppo, and Homs, as well as suspected storage sites in Latakia and Palmyra. The military would have to, in the fog of war, move in quickly to secure suspected facilities and find others. During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, for example, the American military did not secure the Tuwaitha nuclear facility after looting started in Baghdad, even though the facility was well known and fears about a potential Iraqi nuclear weapons program were a stated motivation for the war.

Once the facilities are found and secured, they must be made safe. Initially, a specialized team would have to check for signs of sabotage, booby traps, deliberately released agents, or other potentially hazardous situations, including war damage. After getting the all-clear, an inspection team would begin the task of accounting for Mr. al-Assad’s chemical stockpile. Internal records and inventory lists would be an essential part of this, but a physical inventory would also be necessary. Current amounts of precursors and agents in storage drums and munitions would be compared with the facility’s inventory lists. If a commander, for example, has failed to keep adequate records, an inspector tasked with producing an inventory of a Syrian chemical weapon facility could never state with 100 per cent confidence that none of the weapons had been stolen or used. The inventory would also serve as basis for planning the destruction of the materials.

After the stockpile has been inventoried, the weapons and stocks of agents and precursors would have to be destroyed. The inherent handling difficulties of these materials argue against shipping them to another country for destruction. The closest foreign facilities are in Libya and Russia. The materials would likely have to be airlifted because the most direct overland routes pass through unstable regions in North Africa and the Caucasus. Thus, it is far more likely that the responsible party, which may be a new Syrian government or the United States or the Russian Federation, will opt to destroy the weapons inside Syria. The United States and the Russian Federation have developed a limited number of technologies to destroy chemical weapons.

The most difficult part of destroying the weapons is separating the explosives from the highly toxic agents. Although Syrian nerve agents are believed to be stored as precursors, there have been somewhat unreliable reports that the precursors have been mixed and shells filled. Additionally, stocks of vesicants (mustard, lewisite, phosgene) and crowd-control agents are also believed to be part of the arsenal and are probably stored in bulk and in munitions.

A stable government that can provide security for the workers is necessary for building the facilities and destroying the chemical agents. The destruction would have to be overseen by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the implementing organization for the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Syria is not now a signatory to the CWC, but the United States and Russia are.

The entire process, from building the destruction facilities through their operation and destruction, would take years to complete

Russia drawing up plan

Russia is working on an "effective, concrete" plan for putting Syria's chemical weapons under international control and is discussing the details with Damascus, according to the latest announcement from its foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.

Lavrov told reporters the plan would be presented to other nations soon and that the proposal, which he announced on Monday, was not entirely Russian but grew out of contacts with the United States, Reuters reports.

Putin’s gambit is irresistible to the West, even if it amounts to nothing. After all, it will take time to amount to nothing, and with the passage of time the urgency of military action (already low) will dissipate irrevocably.

The Russian initiative is not attractive because it seems practical or likely to be swiftly implemented but because it allows everyone involved to save face. Obama can look statesmanlike. He is already taking credit for Putin’s move, saying it would not have come about without his own saber-rattling.

The US Congress might be able to avoid the uncomfortable position of agreeing that Syria is guilty of chemical weapons use but declining to do anything about it.

And, the European Union was desperately looking for some step that could avoid further friction within the deeply divided organization.

All this is good news for Western politicians and bad news for the Syrian rebels, who are denouncing the Russian initiative as mendacious. They had hoped that the US would degrade some key regime capabilities, especially the bombing of airports that the regime uses to resupply its troops. Of course, even before the Putin Plan, it was increasingly unlikely that Obama would gain authorization for such a step, in any case.

The one good thing about this development is that it strengthens Russia’s position with the Baath government of Bashar al-Assad and may lend new energy to Moscow’s determination to broker a compromise between the rebels and the regime.

Alexander Kalugin, Russian ambassador to Jordan and a former middle east envoy, has just been on the BBC Today programme, to express his backing for Lavrov's chemical weapons proposals, writes James Meikle.

Kulugin noted that he had heard no positive reaction from the opposition in Syria.

When John Humphrys pointed out the Syrian regime hadn't even admitted having chemical weapons, Kalugin said: "If they say they are ready, it means they admit ... We know there is a chemical arsenal, that is quite a clear fact."

Calling for the "international community" to send in professionals to "secure and verify" , Kalugin admitted such an operation would be difficult but "It is much better to do a difficult job than go ahead with a military option."

China backs Russian plan

Syria's international allies appearing to be queuing up to get behind Russia's chemical weapons offer. China has become the latest. Reuters quotes foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei welcoming the proposal.

With cruise missile strikes against Assad looming, John Kerry, the secretary of state, fielded a question Monday from a reporter in London about avoiding war by saying Assad could "turn over every single bit of his chemical weapons to the international community in the next week." Kerry quickly qualified that Assad "isn't about to do it, and it can't be done."

And yet it might be at hand. Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov took the remark approvingly, raising the prospect that one of Syria's major foreign patrons was embracing a way to avoid a war that would implicate its own interests.

"We will immediately start working with Damascus," Lavrov said Monday.

Suddenly, the Obama administration faced yet another unexpected challenge over Syria: whether it can take yes for an answer, and avoid a war that the Obama administration has never wanted in the first place – but over the last few weeks the White House has felt little choice but to embrace.

My concern is that the Russians don't have that leverage on Assad. The other questions are how long is it going to take, will it involve just the weapons stockpile or the whole production programme, and who would maintain security while this process is under way?